


Conjuring Tricks

by viceindustrious



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-17
Updated: 2011-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Cowards die a thousand deaths.' A series of moments between Blackwood and Coward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conjuring Tricks

**Author's Note:**

> Apart from the fact that I've had bugger all time to do any reading or writing of fic lately, these two still managed to dominate about 75% of my day dreaming this month. There were lots of things I wanted to explore, so this is sort of...a casserole of that.

**Pocket watch**

“You can't really hypnotize people to do anything that they don't want to do in the first place,” Blackwood says.

He has the chain of a small, silver tea basket wound around the middle finger of his left hand. It sways back and forth, back and forth, slow as the fog creeping along the streets outside. There's a golden bead of liquid still hanging from the very end and Coward is staring at it from behind the porcelain rim of his teacup.

“Hardly a very useful trick then, is it?” he asks.

The smile that curls at the corner of his mouth is teasing. Between them, steam is rising from the tea in a scented veil of bergamot. Coward tilts his head, eyes following the motion of the basket.

Blackwood winds the rest of the chain around his finger until it lies still in the palm of his hand, then closes his fist around it.

“You must remember, most people don't realize what it is they want. Until you tell them.”

He places the basket in the centre of the table, then pushes it an inch or two further onto Coward's side. The white of the tablecloth stains immediately. A small spot, unfurling, spreading through the weave of the damask. If it's not cleaned quickly, Coward knows it may just stay there forever. Indelible. He places his cup back onto its saucer and reaches for the basket.

Blackwood covers his hand with his own.

“But you know what you want, don't you, Coward?”

  
**Saw**

There's a beat.

It's inside his head and outside his heart and it's rolling, gaining momentum. Gaining tempo as Lord Blackwood's mouth gives the words shape and his breath gives them pulse, his face hidden in the eaves of his robe.

Tonight their hoods are ivory for Mercury and the knife in Blackwood's hand is a crescent of silver, a killing moon. Outside the sky lacks the comfort of clouds but here Blackwood's voice is a storm, is the thunder of death riding in on his pale horse. Coward feels opium dazed, as if he's been anointed by poppy white tears as he watches the girl. Watches the knife.

His heart is trilling. Doesn't he want to rush forward and seize that wrist, take the blade from that hand? Doesn't he want to stop it? She's young and beautiful and alive, full of _life_. He can see the delicate rise and fall of her chest, the blue map of veins under her thin skin. Her dress is only light and it's very cold. He thought that when he saw her first, thought, _oh she must be cold._  Had even frowned a little.

But the knife will be colder.

And it cannot be taken back. This is final. Death, of course, is coldness. What else? A frost that cannot be thawed. It's wrong to kill. A corpse, a corpse is vile. Death is ugly. Blood taints. She's _alive_.

Oh god, it _can_ be stopped.

Yet the incantation continues, _verba nefanda ferens_ and he moves only in time to the rhythm of Blackwood's words.

Oh god.

When Blackwood strikes he's like a serpent. Not for his speed, but because he is as sure as if the blade were a part of him. One single, streak of movement and then the world is suddenly plunged in colour.

  
**Doves**

And later Coward will ride home with the side of his fist wedged into his mouth.

And later he will stand, arms outstretched in the centre of his bedroom, look to heaven and wait for a judgement to come crashing down on him.

And later he will pace and know. That it is past time and too late already. That it was past time and too late always.

When he raises his hands to his face he spies no damning blood upon them and exhaling, inhaling, no guilt rushes in with his breath. Judgement does not come crashing down upon him. The scream he imagined he must stifle is only a phantom. He can meet his own gaze in the mirror full on.

There's a fire in his eyes that was only an ember before. It amazes him into falling half in love with himself before he turns away and nods. Shock perhaps. Maybe tomorrow things will seem real.

In the morning he's woken by the dawn chorus, from a dream of feathers and a sense of flight. As he washes his soft, clean hands the dream fades a little, but not altogether. Yet stirred in amidst these thoughts of air, his memory of the previous night's sacrifice has a clarity of an almost inconceivable degree.

And all is well.

  
**Levitation**

As Blackwood sits up in bed, Coward stretches down further on his stomach and arches his back, shifting lazily.

“Cowards die a thousand deaths,” he says.

Blackwood gives him _that_ look. A kind of shrewd . . . appreciation. He has the indigo sheets of the bed twisted around his waist like the cast off robes of an imperial senator and it puts Coward in mind of Rome.

“Hmm.” Blackwood reaches out to the bedside table and takes up the silver cigarette case laying there. “Julius Caesar?”

Coward laughs softly, unsurprised and slides his hand under the covers to touch Henry's thigh. For a while he stays just like that, resting his head in the crook of one arm and watching Blackwood smoke. It is night time, very warm and almost peaceful. Hooves clatter faintly on the cobbles outside. Coward listens to the paper smouldering to ash each time Blackwood inhales.

If Blackwood notices the way his eyes track the cigarette (and of course he _does_ , although his own eyes are half closed and gazing at something far off) he doesn't say anything. When Coward pushes himself onto his elbows and plucks the thing from his fingers he allows it as though he were expecting the theft.

“Cowards die a thousand deaths,” Coward murmurs again, staring at the glowing ember of the cigarette.

He glances up at Blackwood and then stubs it out on his own palm.

“Christ!” he hisses.

The pain is an expected shock, his gasp turning into breathless laughter as he falls onto his back. Bites his lip and then laughs again, rolling his head back and forth on the pillow.

“I feel invincible, you know. The globe, Henry! The world! We can have it. We can take it!”

He flexes his fingers, reaching out to the ceiling as the crumpled corpse of the cigarette falls to get lost in the upheaval of the bedclothes. Blackwood leans over him and catches his wrist, eyes bright like polished onyx in the lamplight. Coward follows the play of muscle along his arm, up into his broad shoulders. Even though the room is spilling amber light on the both of them, Blackwood's skin is almost too white. Something by Doré maybe, an engraving rubbed too hard. Beauty in steel. Coward presses his palm against Blackwood's mouth and his burn is kissed.

“I always _have_ taken what I wanted,” Blackwood says, with apparent amusement. 

Coward's hands twitches, rubbing his fingers against the stubble of Blackwood's jaw. He nods, with a little sigh of contentment, pushing his head back into the pillows. The silk is cool against his flushed skin when he turns his face into them. Blackwood's skin is course and warm and warmer still at the side of his neck where his pulse beats.

“What you wanted,” he says, touching his own breast.

He imagines the faces of Blackwood's dead family, the stiff, dark weft of mourning clothes and then the heavy drape of velvet in an opera box, curtains closed for privacy. He can see blood flowing into a golden bowl and over pale hands and those hands on his face and then the wind against his cheek instead. A grey, brisk day, walking shoulder to shoulder with Blackwood together alone amidst the bustle of Oxford Street.

“Yes,” Blackwood says, fiercely.

Coward's hand slips down to Blackwood's shoulder and pushes him back.

“No,” he says.

Something slips loose within him, a tremor.

“What if I said no?” he asks, licking his lips.

The air thickens with a sense of expectation. Coward holds his breath, hand shaking slightly. He suddenly wants to keep talking, to ease the tension winding between them like the tightening of a cello string.

“I-”

He begins and then Blackwood is upon him. So fast. A blink and both his hands are pinned down by his head, sinking deep into the mattress with Blackwood's weight behind them. The sheets are tangled around his legs, a covering as artificial as the flesh and bone between them; beneath the apparel of their skin they're both beasts. Like all men. Blackwood's spirit is something strong and sleek and ready to devour.

“Stop,” he says.

And if he's seen that, stared into the prowling wonder of Henry's soul and embraced it and him too, what is he? Not craven. Prey animals freeze and tremble under the shadow of their hunter. Coward struggles, _writhes_ and grimaces, _grins_ , and keeps his eyes locked with Blackwood's as he begs, _no, don't, please_.

“You're well bred aren't you, Coward?” Blackwood says and bites at his neck. “So refined.”

Oh yes, pure as pearls. Well bred, certainly. His blood is aristocratic through and through. He's been instructed since birth on the proper ways to comport himself. But his nurse would tell him fairy tales too. _The sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth_ , and thank heaven for that, for Blackwood's teeth and Blackwood's tongue.

He can taste the open contempt in those words. Refined. Soft. _Weak_. The real anger that curls Blackwood's lip and presses bruises into his wrists. It is the closest Blackwood ever comes to admitting the disgrace of his own illegitimacy, or the fearful pride he takes in having forced his destiny to fruition regardless

“Stop, Lord Blackwood,” he pleads.

Spreads his legs. Wraps them around Blackwood's waist.

  
**Scarves**

His mother comes dressed in rose, in white, in peach. A flurry of springtime blossom. She comes and the dirt from the gaol floor leaves dark spots on her boots. Patches of mould on their fine, fawn, suede. It's as if she thinks she can embarrass the iron of these cell bars from existence with her softness and her lace.

 _Oh, Daniel_. She stands and her hands flutter uncertainly over her breast, her face, like nervous birds. Now reaching toward his cell, now drawing back suddenly before her fingers can quite pass between the bars. She wrings an endless supply of handkerchiefs between these sad creatures, silk that appears out of thin air or perhaps from next to her thin wrists, folded into tiny parcels and hidden up her sleeves. He does not notice where these hankies disappear to once she's finished sobbing out her grief for the afternoon. Or the morning. Or evening.

He wishes she would stop coming. Her visits give his time here shape and regularity when all he wants is to rest his head on the damp, cold wall of his prison and ossify. Fall so far out of time that the minutes and hours and days can rush by like a silent river above his head.

“Please, Daniel,” she says. “Darling, if you would only be _reasonable_.”

Shrill, her voice is unmusical, untuned by desperation. Coward shifts out of the shadow he is sitting in, leans into a murky shaft of light and watches as her eyes dart away from his face.

“Mother,” he sighs, rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth.

The bruised ring around his eye is almost a match for the circles beneath her own. Perhaps the smear of blood drying at the corner of his mouth would mirror the rubies she wears nicely too, but his beard has grown untidy and it's difficult to tell he's been bleeding (there at least). Of course he is not popular with his warders. If he could, perhaps he would kneel down and bury his face in her skirts as if he were a child again. He wishes she would _stop coming_.

“They cannot possibly blame you, Daniel. Don't you know Lord Cartwright and Emmings were absolved today of this whole, horrid affair?”

“Don't be foolish,” he says.

She clasps her hands together, affronted, but her skin is too bloodless for the knuckles to whiten any further. His mother has lost weight and the flesh that remains seems far too insubstantial to be holding up the heavy mass of silk and cotton she's heaped around herself. She looks, he thinks, like a ghost.

Perhaps all the living look like ghosts to those who are soon to be dead themselves.

Her mouth screws itself up into a tight, unpleasant knot. “Think about your family. Thank about the shame you are bringing to this family.”

It surprises him that it has taken this long for her to say the word. To unsheathe the honour of their family as a weapon to use against him. In his restless nights, the clamour of the other prisoners creeping into the still, dark water of his dreams and engendering poisonous things to breed in their depths, he has sometimes seen the face of his father.

But that is not the figure who comes to him most, or the memory of whose hands touch his forehead, his eyelids and in his mind call him to calm and sleep.

“Shame? And you want me to beg and grovel for my _honour_?” he laughs brightly. Louder when he notices the way her hands fidget at the sound. “There were too many powerful men involved in this for them to hang us all, mother. It would disrupt the Season dreadfully for one thing.”

“You will not joke about this. You will go to court and you will tell them exactly how that wicked, wicked man manipulated you and-”

“Stop it!”

His palms are stinging, slapped against the pitted iron of the bars. The metal sings in his ears, flakes of rust falling like rain.

“Oh my poor, precious little boy!” his mother exclaims and he doesn't need to look to know that her hands have burst from their self imposed cage and are flying free once more. How is she not gagging on all that blind sympathy, that self-conscious distress? He is sure she would be having a fainting spell if their surroundings weren't so filthy.

“Despite what you may believe, mother, Henry did not have me under some sort of sinister spell and despite what you may _wish_ I will not stand and lie and say that he did.”

His mother's eyes are full of tears and not a little suspicion and from one trembling fist, she tugs out a faded, blue handkerchief

“Henry,” she repeats.

Guilty, she might have said instead. Panic tightens its fist suddenly around his heart and he reaches out, impulsively, grabbing at her wrist. He wants to search out something, not mercy, not forgiveness, only the hope of _understanding_ in her eyes before she's weeping and all else is lost in the tempest of her own sorrow.

“Don't come again. Disown me. Strike my name from the family records. Let them,” he shakes her wrist and the handkerchief drifts like a shroud down to the floor. “Let them bury me where they buried him.”

“Oh, Daniel,” she says, again.

The sad sigh of a ghost, nothing more. He closes his eyes against the pallor of her cheeks, the wet, meaningless pity of her gaze and steps back into the shadows.

 _How does it end?_ Henry asked him, _Cowards die a thousand deaths? How does it end?_

“The valiant never taste of death, but once,” he murmurs.

Somewhere, someone is sobbing. It doesn't matter. Henry's voice is closer, warmer, real. _Ah, now I have an idea about that, Daniel. That death is only the beginning._

Yes.

Yes he will certainly hope so.


End file.
